


The Middle of Nowhere

by Dolevalan



Category: Sweeney Todd - Sondheim/Wheeler
Genre: Gen, repost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-29
Updated: 2005-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-04 10:35:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4134309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dolevalan/pseuds/Dolevalan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Selling an elixir, even a miracle elixir, is a bit trickier in the country.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Middle of Nowhere

Tobias wished they’d get back to London. They did a good business in the city, but out here in the middle of nowhere… people wanted their local barbers, not a snappy Italian, and as for the elixir, well, farmers didn’t seem to care about being bald, especially. The middle classes, which were the city’s best customers, just didn’t exist out here. The boy glanced forlornly at the bottles rattling beside him in the back of their shabby cart. The middle sized bottles were all still there, and they had only sold one of the large ones.  
  
“Boy, stop us here,” came the bellow from the back of the wagon, and Toby groaned inwardly. The village they were approaching had just the small, provincial look that in the best case meant no money, and in the worst case meant the two of them chased out of town. But his employer never seemed to notice these things. Well, except for the small slips of his accent. The _signor_ got a little more snappy and a little less Italian after several weeks on the road.  
  
Toby obediently pulled the cart up to the town square. There were people about, here and there, too busy to care about the colorful wagon stopping in their town. Toby had decided that curiosity was a vice of the city dwellers – these people had no sense of the fantastic.  
  
With practiced skill, he set up the foldout display from one side of the cart, and one woman actually glanced at him as he began arranging bottles. He took this as a very hopeful sign indeed. Once all the dark brown glass bottles were in order (small in front, large in back, middle…in the middle, obviously), he cleared his throat meaningfully. A smallish brown dog wandered up and sat at his feet.  
  
 _Bigger audience than I’ve had some places_ , he thought to himself. He wondered idly if becoming a chimney sweep’s apprentice wouldn’t have been a better idea after all. Shaking such thoughts off, he smiled winningly at the empty square (well, and the dog, but he couldn’t decide whether to ignore it or not) and drew a breath. “Ladies and gentleman, may have your attention, please?”  
  
The answer was apparently no. The dog whined a little.  
  
He took a deeper breath and tried again, “Do you wake every morning with shame and…despair…” He trailed off as a severe-looking middle-aged woman scowled at him, as if he were very impertinent to suggest that she _ever_ woke in shame. The dog barked and thumped his tail once against the dirt before running off in the other direction. Tobias tried to remain cheerful and wholesome looking. “Ladies and gentlem–”  
  
The large constable cut him off abruptly. “You boy. Whatcha fancy you’re at, eh? Shame an’ despair, peh. What’s yer game?”   
  
Tobias gave a nervous little half-bow. “Good morning, gov’ner. Well, you see sir, Signor Perelli and me, we was just…”  
  
“Perelli, eh? Sounds like a foreigner.” The beefy man picked up one of the bottles from the center of the display. “What’s all this then?”   
  
“Perelli’s Miracle Elixir, gov. Stimulates the growth, sir. Of hair, sir, for those what have lost it. You see,” he moved to pull off his cap, deciding this was the closest he’d get to a customer in the near future, “I myself was struck with a –”  
  
“Nah, nah. Boy, we don’t need any fancy I-talian hair in this village. Good English hair’s good enough for us.” He eyed Toby’s head accusingly. “’sat all?”   
  
Thinking quickly, he said, “Of course not, sir, course not. Signor Pirelli is the king of the barbers, the barber of kings. If anyone in your lovely village needs a –”   
  
Cut off again. “We’ve a perfectly good barber. Mr. Collins’ more than competent. An’ ENG-lish,” he said slowly and deliberately, as if Toby were foreign as well, or perhaps just an idiot. “So, you see." Apparently, being English was in itself a very important advantage. For half a second Tobias considered blurting out that Pirelli was not, in fact, Italian, but this would lead to a) nasty questions he couldn’t answer and, most likely, b) a beating.   
  
Though he knew Pirelli could easily hear the entire exchange, Toby was, as usual, on his own. He shoved his cap back over his head and its ridiculous amount of hair, trying to look respectful while doing so. “So…sir, you’re quite sure there’s nobody as needs a…”  
  
“No. We don’t need any I-talian tomfoolery ‘ere. This is a proper village, this is.” The man tossed the bottle into the air, but Toby managed to catch it, albeit less than gracefully, before it could break on the ground. “Now be off with yuh, before y’begin t’annoy people.”  
  
Tobias saw that it would be useless to try and sell anything to the man, or try to get around him. He sighed, nodded, and began packing the wagon up again. The constable stood by, supervising without attempting any further conversation.  
  
Once all the bottles of each size were securely packed away and the wagon was closed, Toby climbed up to the driver’s seat. The grey mare looked almost as tired as he felt. The constable called after him, as he touched the his stick gently to the horse’s flank, “We don’t need any I-talian medicines, do we? No, we do not. Go sell ‘em somewhere else.”   
  
Shaking his head to himself, Toby drove away from the village without speaking for a long while. Finally, he ventured, “Gov’ner?”  
  
A low grunt indicated that Pirelli was listening, at least in an absent way.  
  
“D’ye think that…maybe…it’s about city season again, gov’ner?”  
  
There was a long enough pause that he began to worry that Pirelli either was angry or had fallen asleep. The horse plodded along, grey as the sky above. After another batch of minutes had ticked by, the response finally came from within the wagon. “ _Si_ , _bambino_. Perhaps ita ess time to return to the city, the city where we first founded oura fortune, eh? I thinka you right, _bambino._ ”  
  
Toby breathed a quiet sigh of relief. “St. Dunstan’s, then, gov?”  
  
“ _Si, si_ , asa you say.”  
  
It was cold, and going to rain soon, but at least they were heading back to London. London, where people were interested in curiosities and foreigners, and they could always scrape together enough money for an inn, however disreputable and ratty. Home. There was, after all, no place like London.


End file.
